12 travelers at this place:

Yokohama is about an hour south of Tokyo, but it seems like it takes an hour to get places within Tokyo, so I find the whole distance thing here a bit confusing.

The stadium is small - about 30k seats, and it was mostly full on a hot sticky weeknight, so the BayStars definitely draw. They don't win much, but this season they have won a few more than the Swallows, so they are both at the bottom of the Central Nippon League.

Local kids stand on the field to greet they players as they are announced, and the players run out and meet the kids and sign their jerseys...it's a sweet way to start the game! The crowd chants the whole game, and the chants change to include each batters name as they come up (only the fans of the batting team chant.) We grabbed some bento boxes, a cucumber on a stick and some beer, got our seats and proceeded to chant along when we could figure out how.

Girls go up and down the aisles constantly (every 5 minutes no exaggeration) dressed in the colors of the brand of beer they are selling with a mini keg on their backs. They smile and wave and look super happy, but they are the only Japanese women so far that I have seen break a sweat. There is a lot of beer consumed, and a lot of bento boxes.

After so much running around the last couple of days, we only lasted about 4 innings before we headed home to bed, but it was a super cool experience and the boys definitely noticed differences between the baseball and and the baseball at home.Read more

I really like the landscape parks in the bigger cities. They are basically an escape from the crowdedness and noise from the city streets. I found one online that looked pretty cool and was not too far away: Koishikawa korakuen. This park next to the Tokyo Sky Dome is relatively large for a park. The entrance fee was only 300 yen so i decided to go in. The park is dotted with lakes and ponds and bridges connect several small islands. The parks abundant trees allowed for some nice strolling in the shade. I gues it's not that popular with the younger crownd in Tokyo since most people were way over 60. After an hour walking around i had seen the entire park and thought it was time to go to Yokohma.
Even though Yokohama is pretty close to Tokyo and it's actually pretty hard to see where one city begins and the other ends, i had not yet visited this place. There was nothing of my particular interest so i decided to go to the rebuillt harbour district. This used to be a big port with warehouses but has been converted to a huge shopping center with theme park and loads of restaurants. It was only a half hour trainride from my hostel to the harbour district. These last couple of days have been really warm and as i got out of the airconditioned train and the hot humid air made me sweat almost immediately. It took some time for me to figure out where to go which is not unusual with a lot of signs that are mostly in kanji. But with a little help from Google maps i found my bearings and set off into the harbor district. The first half hour of walking took me through various huge and expensive shopping malls. Interesting to see but not my cup of tea. I walked passed the theme park where i could hear the kids screaming as they rushed down in one of the rollercoasters. I read somewhere online that the red brick warehouses contained sever very interesting restaurants and i decided to check it out. Halfway to the warehouses i suddenly heard a lady screaming for joy at a truck that was parked at the side of the road. As i got closer I realised this was not a regular truck. The movie Deadpool had just been released in Japan and so a huge deadpool statue in an interesting pose was placed on this truck and then just driven around town. Meanwhile the soundtack for the movie was screaming out of the speakers. Aahh yes these are the kind of things that make me love Japan. I took some quick pictures and went on to the red brick warehouses. It was getting really hot and uncomfortable in the sun and that gave me a good excuse to go into a restaurant for some lunch. I checked several restaurants before choosing one that sells Hawaiian burgers which is basically a burger with avocado. But boy is it delicious! I took some time to really enjoy and let the food settle for a bit before heading of to Yokohmama's chinatown. This is one of Japans biggest chinatowns and it shows. Literally dozens of streets litterd with shops and restaurants that serve chinese food. I found a nice and colorfully decorated temple and walked around in the backstreets some more before going back to the station and joining Jimmy and some other guests in yet another drinking session at Nui's.Read more

We left a rainy Nagoya after a sleep in and caught the 9:26am shinkansen to Tokyo.

Once in Tokyo we stashed the bags in a locker and the pram at baggage storage (too tall for a locker). Then we headed out into the rain and cold to Tsukiji fish market so hubby could get a knife.

Just before 3pm we had all our possessions back and were on a train to Kannai (the closest station to our Yokohama hotel). A stop beforehand we spontaneously made the decision to jump off the train at Yokohama so hubby could get his "duty free" allowance of alcohol.

By 5pm we were at Kannai and set off again (this time fully loaded) to trek through the constant rain to our hotel for the night - Hotel Monterey Yokohama. Where we arrived like drowned rats (even with umbrellas). Its a nice place and we have a triple with harbour views.

After a hot shower we looked on maps for the closest place to eat. We were dreading treking through the rain again. Google maps delivered a soba noodle restaurant about 4 buildings away. So off we set. Once there they had an english menu and an unusual offering - all noodle sizes were the same price. Your choice was medium, large or Mt fuji size. Of course hubby had a go at Mt fuji, while the kids devoured a whole bowl of udon.

This is our last night in Japan in a hotel. Its supposed to be sunny tomorrow. Fingers crossed as it was bloody freezing and miserable today being so wet.Read more

A slower start again and we packed up our bags, checked out and had the hotel store the bags for us. It was a clear day again, we checked some web cams and decided to head back to Enoshima Island for our best chance of a view. We got took the train to Fujisawa and from here jumped on the Enoshima Electric railway for the 10 min journey to Enoshima. Another walk back through town to the bridge and here were were able to see Mt Fuji!!!

Our view was not clear, but you could make out the shape of it in the haze and see the snow off to one side. Being Sunday the place was quite busy, and thankfully not as windy as last time. The bay had lots of little sailing boats out and the shore was lined with surfers. It was a pleasant morning. The kids voted to ride the monorail back, so we returned to Yokohama around 12:30pm. From here we headed back to Coco curry for our last good meal before heading to the airport.

We ended up at the train station early, so we yried to move our NEX reservation to an earlier train. This was a bit of a debacle as the counter girl proceeded to cancel our reservation in the vending machine, then couldn't rebook us new reservations. A trek across the station saw a mega long line that would make us miss the earlier train. So we jumped on the early one - as its usually near on empty.. except this one time. At Tokyo a flood of people embarked, we split up but managed to get seats. When the ticket man came through it was no issue, he just adjusted it on his machine.

At Narita we waited about 10mins for check in to open, then Jason was called over the PA. His bag had the lithium go pro batteries in it. Once they were removed it was all good. There's always one issue each trip. We then went over to terminal 2 for a walk and bit of food. Then came back to terminal 3 ready to board.Read more

Two days after my trip to Akihabara, Timm and me were invited to Yokohama by Yuki, the sister of my japanese teacher, who works there in an Izakaya, which is basically a japanese pub. The Izakaya is in Yokohame, so roughly one hour by train from Tokyo, which means it's also pretty expensive to get there, unfortunately, but it was completely worth it. What Yuri didn't mention was, that there was a birthday being celebrated at the exact same time, so it was pretty lively in the Izakaya. Fortunately, Japanese are a very friendly in groups, when sitting in an Izayaka or restaurant, so it was no problem at all. The thing was, Yuri was the only one with good english so we were forced to try to make use of our very limited japanese but it was hilarious and we kind of understood what the other one was saying. A big advantage was being there at night, because in the night time, Japan is even more impressing since there are light everywhere and the district of Yokohama we were in, was pretty modern and big.Read more